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Roadway Express Inc. - Case Study

Case Summary
Roadway Express Inc.
Akron, Ohio
Services: A transportation company specializing in three-day delivery of industrial, commercial and retail goods in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico. Provides international freight services in 140 countries and employs approximately 27,000 people worldwide.
Critical needs: Scalable Web content management system. Automatic content conversion and publishing to multiple Web formats. Ease-of-use for both technical and non-technical staff. Content contribution from native file formats by company staff and business partners.

"We chose Stellent Content Management over other content management solutions because we wanted an easy-to-use system that would require little training and deliver a quick return on investment. Stellent enables fast and easy access to critical company information, allowing us to communicate more effectively across our organization and more efficiently manage our employee intranet." - Linda Ray, Roadway Express' senior tech analyst.

Background
For trucking companies to effectively manage the delivery of goods to customers, quick and frequent internal communication is a must. To address this issue, Roadway Express implemented an intranet in the late 1990s that was developed and managed by internal programmers and designers to help facilitate information sharing across its 360 locations nationwide. Multiple sites were created and accessed by employees for departmental reports, company news, competitor intelligence, marketing information, human resource manuals, press releases and a variety of other materials.

While Roadway's intranet provided a useful method for distributing information to employees, the company quickly outgrew it. The site was growing at a rate of 400 percent every six months, and all content was required to be sent to the corporate communications department where it was coded and published to the intranet. Depending upon the timeliness and complexity of the content, this process took anywhere from a day to a few months.

Roadway needed a more efficient way to manage its intranet content. The company required a system that would enable technical and non-technical employees to easily contribute content using applications with which they were already familiar. After evaluating multiple content management vendors, Roadway chose Stellent.

"We selected Stellent Content Management in part because it didn't require our employees to learn how to use new tools in order to publish content to the intranet," said Linda Ray, senior tech analyst for Roadway. "Since employees no longer need to rely on dedicated development staff to publish their content, information is made available on the intranet much faster. As a result, employees can find almost all of the business content they need on the site, and fewer documents are printed and mailed to staff, which has generated time and cost savings for Roadway. Most importantly, communication within the company has improved as information is more frequently updated and distributed."

How Roadway Express' intranet works
Roadway uses the Stellent Content Server as a central, Web-based repository that houses all of its intranet content. To date, more than 16,000 pieces of content have been contributed to the server.

Using a Web browser, more than 50 Roadway employees from various departments contribute content to the Content Server where it is saved in its native format, such as a word processing document, spreadsheet or graphic file, enabling easy updates. In the near future, employees from the company's 360 locations nationwide will contribute content to the system.

Stellent customized the content check-in page for Roadway. When submitting content, users assign metadata to it, enabling users to quickly search for needed information. Stellent's customization provided Roadway with a consistent look and feel across each page of its intranet, providing Roadway with more control over its site branding.

Once submitted, Stellent automatically converts the content to various formats, including HTML and PDF, for Web publishing to Roadway's intranet. This automatic process eliminates the need to route content through the Webmaster for coding, resulting in quicker publishing to and fresher content on the site. This automation allows Roadway's Corporate Communications and IT departments to focus on other company initiatives.

Stellent Content Server will eventually deliver content to the company's extranet, called "Your Roadway." Much of this content already exists in the Stellent Content Server and is used for the intranet. The site, which is under development, is designed to improve communication among Roadway truck drivers, dock employees and other Roadway employees by providing them access to information outside of Roadway's offices.

Benefits of using Stellent Content Management
Roadway is experiencing numerous benefits from its Stellent Content Management implementation. The system has dramatically improved company-wide communication and is generating time and cost savings.

"The biggest benefit we've experienced with Stellent is improved communication across our company," said Mike Lyman, manager of online communications for Roadway. "Rather than waiting weeks or months for information, it's immediately available through the intranet, which is becoming a central point for employee communications. As we grow, Stellent will enable us to quickly and efficiently keep employees updated on what's happening throughout the organization. In addition, the system's scalability will allow us to seamlessly add new content management functionality to both our intranet and extranet as our company and our needs expand."

Roadway has reduced costs related to printing and distributing information, as more information is made available on the intranet. Roadway also has decreased its employee IT training costs because the Stellent system is easy to use. Only content contributors require training, which is provided in one, two-hour training course. Roadway will soon train its employees via virtual conferencing, which will further simply the training process.

Productivity also has increased at Roadway since employees can more easily access information they need on the Stellent-powered intranet. In addition, because content is automatically published through Stellent Content Management, specific employees are no longer dedicated to coding and publishing content for the site.

"Using Stellent, we spend approximately 80 percent less time managing our intranet," Lyman said. "Our cross-functional approach of managing the site through our Corporate Communications and IT departments and Stellent has enabled us to add tremendous value across the enterprise without adding much additional staff."

Stellent Content Management Features
Stellent Content Management enables customers to rapidly deploy line-of-business Web sites as well as content management solutions for enterprise-wide initiatives to standardize content management for use by multiple sites and applications. The system offers the widest array of content contribution and content delivery mechanisms on the market, enabling any user to contribute any kind of content into the system for conversion, management and delivery to any kind of consumer or application. Stellent Content Management also integrates with existing security systems and provides business personalization features. For information on how to obtain the Stellent Content Management system, contact Stellent at 1-800-989-8774.

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